My Best Friends, A Rooftop Picnic, and Cake
by Walkway
Summary: "Those two were always such dorks. But they were my dorks. And I love my dorks. All the sponge-based arguments in the world couldn't ruin the cheerful feeling being there with them gave me." Roxas, Axel, Xion. Best Friends.


You could color me surprised; I wasn't expecting a day like this. Seriously, how dumb was Saïx to send all _three of us _on a mission together? Did he not expect us to start goofing off? Well, _I_ wasn't goofing off. It was just them.

…  
Okay, you got me, I was goofing off too. But you couldn't blame me! Axel coerced us—me, into it. And if there was one talent that Axel had other than setting things on fire and having the spikiest hair in the entire multiverse, it was coercing you into doing what you should not be doing, when you are not supposed to be doing it.

See, a while before, I don't remember when; after a while, a lot of the memories of sitting on the clock tower talking just kind of bled together. Anyway, Axel had promised to treat Roxas and me to some special food. Sounds pretty uneventful, but if my memory serves me correctly, at the time we were pretty much only aware of Ice Cream and bread when it came to food, so I found myself just a tad keyed up at the idea.

Of course, getting food isn't so simple for members of a super secret covert organization. We couldn't exactly walk into a restaurant and say "Yo! Fire us up some hamburgers!" while clad in big black hooded cloaks. Well, perhaps Xigbar would do something like that. Though I don't know how long the people around him would last…But enough about Xigbar. …Actually, one more thing about Xigbar; he kind of gives me the creeps. Something about the way he calls me "poppet" gives me this funny feeling in my stomach—and not like "ha-ha Axel is a goofball" kind of funny.

Anyway, back to the story. I need to learn to not get sidetracked so easily. Okay, deep breath, deep breath, here we go. As I was saying, it wasn't easy to just go and get food since it wasn't a little booth thing like where we get our Ice Cream, so Axel actually _took off _his coat to go in and buy food. Yes, you heard correct, he _took off_ the coat. As far as I know, nobody has ever seen such a sight and I can only imagine the glory and or terror that the people inside that restaurant saw. Apparently, and he made me get this part memorized by the way, he took off without paying. He was probably embarrassed about what he was wearing under his coat or something and got out of there, but still! Can you believe him? That's not very nice! I made sure to drop some munny in the store's mailbox later to make up for it.

Natch,(I picked that one up from Demyx, by the way) we figured that the clock tower would be too cramped to have a full meal on, so Roxas lead us up to the top of some building in Twilight Town. I thought it was kind of strange, but it turned out to be pretty nice; I loved lying on my back and looking up at the glowing orange sky—plus it was nice to not have to worry about falling a half kajillion meters off a ledge every time I have to adjust my posture.

After much running and jumping around, we'd finally made it up to the roof where we sat down close together and Axel began to unload the bags of food and snacks that he _stole._ I sat down on the sides of my knees and he handed me a tiny brown paper bag, which I took and held delicately between my gloved fingers. I peeled it open and took out the contents. It was a chicken leg, but at the time, I had no idea what a chicken leg _was_. So to me it was just an icky fleshy looking hunk of disgusting meat. You could probably guess what I did with it. Yep! I passed it along to my good buddy Roxas who scarfed the whole thing down without thinking. Little did he know you're not supposed to _swallow_ the _bone_.

Another fun note, Roxas much like myself, was not aware of many common things, such as the universal sign for choking, so he just kind of sputtered around for a few seconds until we noticed that something was wrong.

"Roxas?" I grabbed the hair on the top of my head and looked on. It tends to worry you when you see your best friend spastically rolling around on the ground. "Axel, what did you feed him?"

I thought Axel was acting awfully calm. For a guy who uses fire so much, you'd think some of it would rub off on him. Well actually I guess if it actually _rubbed off_ on him he'd be on fire. And that wouldn't be very good. Although, have you _seen_ his hair? He certainly _looks_ like he's on fire.  
…Uh-oh, I got sidetracked again, didn't I?

Okay, so Roxas was choking and Axel simply muttered, "I had a feeling this would happen." He walked over to Roxas who was still rolling around on the roof in a panic. He picked him up, held him still and gave him a big strong smack right between his shoulder blades. It must have hurt, because the yelp Roxas made as the chicken bone flew majestically and disgustingly through the air and out of his mouth was probably loud enough for the entire town to hear. It was a pretty gross sight, but I'd gladly watch him spit up tens of thousands of saliva covered chicken bones rather than have to see him roll around on the ground choking and suffering like he was.

I walked over and patted his little blond head. "You okay?"

He nodded and turned his attention to Axel. "Could you please not try to kill me Axel? Warn me before I eat something dangerous, please."

Axel chuckled and grinned sheepishly; he crouched down to the orange brick roof under him and shrugged his shoulders. "Forgot you didn't know these things. My bad."

"It _was_ pretty delicious though!" Roxas smiled and went digging through more bags, scarfing down all the meat products he could find.

Axel occupied his own mouth with this huge, very intimidating sandwich. Me, I found myself enjoying this thing Axel called a salad. It was a bunch of different plants and stuff combined together, but not really combined so much as just put next to each other. It was like having a million different flavors in my mouth at once! Amazingly delicious, if you ask me. We also all shared these things called fries, which were long, rectangular strips of what I guess were potatoes. They were greasy, but for some reason we couldn't seem to get enough of them. There was a lot of simple, meaningless, idle chit-chat, and before I knew it, a whole hour had passed. Time flies when you're with your best friends, huh?

Suddenly Axel raised a finger and exclaimed, "Oh! Almost forgot!"

"Forgot what?" I smiled and poked his shoulder playfully. "You mean you didn't have it memorized?"

He rolled his eyes at me. "I got us some stuff to drink, too."

"Water?" Roxas looked up from the tray of delicious, salty fries.

"Nope," Axel grabbed the smaller of two remaining bags. "Soda!"

"Soda?" I tilted my head quizzically. I'd heard of soda before—I heard some of the kids from Twilight Town mention it before, but I'd never actually seen it with my own eyes.

"Soda," he pulled out three tall, glass bottles filled with a dark brown liquid and cracked them open, passing them out. It didn't look too appetizing, but I was about to be proven terribly wrong. Because when I took that bottle and put it to my lips, pouring the cool drink into my mouth, it was like everything great in the world popped into my jaws to say hello to my taste buds. Sweet, refreshing and tasty.

Roxas and Axel both drank theirs pretty complacently. Clearly it wasn't having the same affect on them that it had on me—and that was too bad, because I was feeling pretty awesome thanks to this soda. Soda and my pals. Could it have gotten any better?

I held the bottle in front of me with both hands and quickly gulped the remaining soda down. _'Glug, glug, glug, glug…'_

"Hey, uh, Xion," Roxas placed his own soda on the ground and turned towards me, laying on his side.

"What is it?" I neatly placed my now empty bottle in one of the leftover bags. Cleanliness is next to godliness, right? Riku told me that once when we were together. I couldn't tell if he was just kidding or if it was actually good advice he was giving me. It's hard to read a guy wearing a blindfold all the time, you know?

Ah, darn! Sidetracked again. Sorry!

"Nothing," he laughed quietly to himself, "you were just kind of loud while you were drinking that."

I wondered if that was a problem or something. You don't really learn much etiquette living in a castle with six super standoffish guys, and two total dorks. "So?"

"It just sounded funny is all," he leaned on his elbow with his fist under his chin. The sun was making his hair glow and his eyes sparkle as he looked at me. It complemented him nicely.

"Oh! Okay!" I grinned at him and lay on my back, looking up at the clouds. "Hey, Axel? Thanks a lot for everything today. I mean I'm not happy that you stole, but…I'm glad you like us enough to spend the day doing all of this."

I wasn't looking at him, but I could tell that he was smiling. "You know me."

Roxas chuckled, "Isn't there one bag left?"

I started giggling before I even said my snappy response, "See Axel, he got the number of bags memorized. Aren't you proud?"

His eyes were glazing over at me, I could _feel _it. "Didn't I tell you to stop doing that?"

"If you did, I wasn't obviously listening," I replied smugly and squeezed a lock of my ebon hair between my fingers.

Axel cackled at me. "_Get it memorized._"

I sat up and smiled sincerely at him. "Will do." He smiled back the same way.

Roxas got down on his elbows, leaning towards Axel. "Yeah yeah, what's in the bag?"

"Good question! I will show you," he grabbed the bag and pried it open. And out of this large, brown bag came an object that would inspire _possibly _the most intelligent piece of conversation in the history of forever.

"Check it out," Axel placed the aforementioned object down in front of the three of us who were seated in a neat semi-circle. It was circular with a flat top, covered in some sort of white topping and the portion underneath it was a murky yellow color. "Cake," Axel smirked at us.

"Cake?" Roxas poked the cake and promptly shook his head. "That is a sponge, Axel."

"What?" Axel blinked. I don't think I'd ever seen someone look so bewildered. "No it's not. It's a cake. It's a delicacy."

"Then why is it a sponge?" Roxas' face scrunched up and made his own priceless expression of bewilderment at this mysterious 'cake'.

"It's not a sponge, though."

"But it looks like a sponge, feels like a sponge. Ergo, sponge."

"Yeah but it's not."

"Are you trying to poison me and Xion!" Roxas pretty much made himself fly backwards. I really wasn't looking to get involved in the ridiculousness, so I kept my mouth shut tight.

"It's _cake!_ Though, it _is_ called a sponge-cake sometimes…" Axel scratched his left tattoo.

"See?" Roxas crossed his arms and made a resounding 'harumph'. "You just said it yourself! It's a sponge."

"No. It's not a sponge. Who's the knowledgeable one again? It's a _cake to eat. Got it memorized?_" I could tell that he was getting a bit annoyed; his face was almost as red as his hair. And it was that that pushed me over the edge and made me unable to hold in the stream of manic giggles that had been trying to burst out from my mouth. Those two were always such dorks. But they were _my dorks._ And I love my dorks. All the sponge-based arguments in the world couldn't ruin the cheerful feeling being there with them gave me.

"Xion," Roxas sighed at me, "this is serious business, and we could _die._ He's trying to kill us, I tell you." I couldn't tell if he was serious or just being silly, but it didn't stop me from continuing to laugh. Thank goodness for Riku and his awesome exposition skills, for once I wasn't the most naïve person in our group! I did feel a bit sympathetic though, thus I settled myself down, reached forward, took a handful of the cake, stuffed it into my mouth, and prepared the greatest acting I could ever possibly pull off.

"_Gack!_" I grabbed my throat and let myself tumble onto my side. "It's…a sponge! Poison sponge!" I kicked my legs in the air frantically.

"See!" Roxas yelled towards Axel. "I was right all along!" Quick side note, remember when I said 'greatest acting I could ever possibly pull off'? That isn't very good, and it was terribly obvious that I was only kidding around. Still, we all played along.

"Roxas, that's just a coincidence," Axel rolled his hands as he reached for the cake. "I'll eat this piece and show you that it's okay." He grabbed a chunk of the cake and stuffed it in his mouth. "Oh no!" Axel started to imitate my bad acting. "It _is_ poison sponge!" he pretended to stumble over to Roxas as if he were dying. "I'm not…gonna make it."

"Why Axel? Why?" And now Roxas was imitating me too.

"I don't know…" Axel shook his head of bright crimson tresses back and forth. "But I'm taking you with me!" he leap at Roxas and crammed a piece of cake into his mouth. "Eat the poison sponge!"

It was at that point that committing myself to my acting became nothing but a pipe dream, and so I allowed myself to burst out into hysteric laughter at the sight.

After the cake was successfully shoved down his throat, Roxas got down on his knees and shouted to the heavens, "NOOOO!" and then both he and Axel collapsed beside me, 'dead'.

It wasn't long before they were overcome with the same laughter as I. And so we laughed and laughed and laughed, together. That was happiness, right there.

But then all of a sudden it hit me like a brick wall. "Oh. Oh. Uh-oh. Um, guys…"

"Yeah?" they both looked at me.

"Didn't we have a mission?" I could hear them both swallow hard.

"Oh crap."


End file.
